South Texas explosion adds to industrial plant's safety woes

POINT COMFORT (AP) - Eleven people were injured, one seriously, in a blast at Formosa Plastics Corp., the latest in several fires and explosions at Texas industrial plants this year.

The cause of the Formosa explosion Thursday is under investigation, but the blast occurred in the Olefins 2 unit, where the building blocks of plastics are made, said Patrick Pastuck, a spokesman at the company's Livingston, N.J., headquarters.

Texas Commission on Environmental Quality spokeswoman Andrea Morrow said the explosion was in a propylene line.

The Formosa explosion was about 110 miles from Texas City, where in March a blast at BP's refinery killed 15 and injured 170 people. Bwas fined $21 million for that explosion. The Texas City refinery also had a fire in July, and the next month a fire erupted at a BP subsidiary in Alvin.

On Friday, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board dispatched a team of five investigators to the Formosa site to assess damage and decide whether to launch a formal investigation.

The CSB said it was already investigating a blast that killed five of the company's workers in April 2004 at the company's plant in Illiopolis, Ill.

Five workers were killed and two were injured in an explosion at a unit that produces polyvinyl chloride, or PVC.

Over the past decade, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration has inspected the Point Comfort plant a dozen times, five of them resulting in violations, OSHA online records show.